Chris' 2005 Iron Butt Rally

Chapter 8

Back To Where it All Began 

            I continued west Thursday morning, through the Toronto rush hour and south into Michigan, just north of Detroit.  Unfortunately my Autocom system was acting up at this point.  I was getting horrible feedback and static through the system.  This could have been from moisture in the cables or some other problem.  It didn’t matter.  What it meant was that I had no telephone or radar detector.  All my audio inputs were fed into my headset through the Autocom system.  I missed the telephone most of all.  Not only could I stay in contact with other riders and friends, it kept me from becoming too bored.  There was nothing I could do until I stopped at the end of the leg. 

            Heading into Chicago is always an adventure.  Illinois is full of toll plazas and my EZ Pass does not work there.  There were two bonus locations in Chicago, only a few blocks apart, but they were in the heart of the city.  And things did not start well as I headed into the city. 

            I approached a toll plaza and ended up in an exact change lane, with no change.  It was too late to back out so I edged to the side of the lane to let other traffic pass me.  As I pondered the stupidity of being stuck here, I watched the arm on the toll barrier go up and down as cars went through.  It certainly seemed that the only thing to do was to piggy back on one of the cars going through and deal with the ticket later. 

            Well, as I can now attest, the arms on those toll barriers are a lot quicker and sturdier than they look.  As I tried to slide through following the car in front of me, the arm came down on me striking the windshield and then in rapid succession, my head and arm.  I felt like I had been struck with a 2x4, which, of course, I had been.  The bike nearly went down, which would have been even worse.  As it was, I pulled off to the side of the booth waiting for the authorities to come over.  My arm ached and I had a crack in the windshield.  I sat and waited, but no one came.  I decided to slowly pull off to see if that would stir any activity, but nothing.   There is probably a law somewhere in Illinois that if you get whacked in the head by a toll gate, then you are exempt from the 25 cent toll.  I pulled off bruised but otherwise unmolested. 

            I picked up the first bonus downtown with no problems.  The instructions for the second indicated that you may have to park in a garage and walk.  That seemed somewhat extreme.  As I got to the intersection, I steered the bike for the sidewalk and popped up on it with little fanfare.  I would like to think I parted the sea of pedestrians like Moses parting the Dead Sea, but the reality was somewhat less thrilling.  No one even batted an eye at me as I parked the bike on the sidewalk.  One exceptionally helpful lady even pointed to the marker I sought.  I snapped the photo, re-read the bonus directions and was off again. 

            After sitting in afternoon rush hour in Chicago, I headed west toward Nebraska.  It was now Thursday evening.  I needed to ride most of the night to be able to reach Scottsbluff, Nebraska Friday morning.  The bonus there was another lighthouse that had to be photographed during the day. 

            The week before, I had seen a special on the weather channel on so-called “Super Cell Thunderstorms”.  The special showed the devastation that one storm had caused in Nebraska one summer evening.  As I crossed west through the night in Omaha, things began looking very bad.  The entire sky became a horrendous lightening show.  It was clear to me that this was a real life example of a super cell thunderstorm.  All around me were sky to ground lightening strikes.  I became worried about riding blindly into a tornado.  Heavy rain limited visibility.  When I could see, it was because lightening turned night into day.   

            As I approached a ridge, it felt like I was riding closer and closer to the storm.  I was just trying to get though it, but the storm seemed to go on forever.  I passed a tractor trailer that had gone off the road.  This made me feel a little better, because state troopers on the scene were standing out in the storm.  If they weren’t worried about lightening, then I should be okay.  At least that is what I kept telling myself.  I later found out that several horses, not of the iron variety, had been killed during the storm that night. 

            I continued west, eventually breaking out of the storm.  I pulled into a rest stop and got an hour of sleep.  Later that morning I reached the bonus and ran into Ed Phelps.   He had gone to North Carolina and Key West.  We talked briefly and then parted.  After obtaining the bonus, I headed for Denver.  I was tired and looking forward to some solid sleep at the hotel.

            As I rode to Denver, I felt good about my ride for the first leg. I did not think that I would be in first place, but I thought I would be in good position and well rested for the second leg.  I caught up with Ed outside of Denver and we rode through some terrible traffic to the checkpoint. 

            We were met there by Paul and his wife Tricia.  I filled out my paperwork and had Paul double check everything.  I knew there would be many riders that would lose points for not filling out their fuel logs or bonus sheets properly.  I did not want this to happen to me.  One of my mini-goals was to not lose one point at the scorer’s table. 

            After waiting for a short time to be scored, I sat down at the scorers table.  As my scorer began going over my paperwork, I began watching Jeff Earls, who was being scored next to me.  The thought was running through my mind, “Boy he certainly got a lot of bonuses.”  I did not see his final score at that time, but it certainly seemed to me that he had run a good leg.  A very good leg.  That nagging feeling in the back of my mind continued growing. 

            I grabbed some of the food provided for the riders and went upstairs for some much needed rest.  I set the Screaming Meanie timer for 4 hours and went right to sleep.  I awoke about a half an hour before the new bonus sheets were to be handed out and wandered downstairs.  I ran into Paul Taylor outside the rider lounge.  He gave me quizzical look and asked if I had slept okay.  I told him that I had slept great and just wanted to check a couple of things on the bike.  I repacked the bike, which included the laptop computer this time. 

            I went to the parking lot and tried in vain to get the Autocom working.  Nothing seemed to work.  Nancy had shipped a variety of new cables to the checkpoint, but none of them seemed to fix the problem.  I resigned myself to running the rest of the rally without a phone or radar detector. 

            As I worked on the bike, Paul came up behind me.  He asked again how I felt, saying that he thought I should try to get some more sleep.  I looked at my watch and saw it was only a few minutes before 9:00 PM when the new bonuses would be handed out.  At about the same time, I realized that my watch was still on Eastern Time!  I had gotten up 2 hours early.  I had wasted an opportunity to be really, really rested at the start of the 2^nd leg.  All of the sudden, I felt very tired.  I wasn’t feeling very smart either. 

            I retreated to my room and tried to get some more sleep with no success.  I tossed and turned before finally giving up and heading back downstairs.  Twelve hours later, I would really be missing those two hours of lost sleep. 

            I found Paul again and we talked about the first leg.  Paul told me that Shane had gone from New Brunswick to North Carolina.  This allowed him to pick up several hundred more points than I had.  Paul told me not to worry about it.  He thought I was in good position.  I told Paul that I did not think I could beat Shane.  He was too good of a rider and would just grind me down over the next week. 

            Once the scores were posted, I found there were another 10 riders that I also could not beat.  As I looked at the scores, I was stunned.  I had scored just over 28,000 points, but the top five riders were all over 30,000 and all had gone west.  Every one of them had ridden significantly fewer miles (and therefore much more efficient routes) than I had. 

            As I looked at the scores, Jim Owen sat in first with nearly 10,000 points more than me.  Jeff Earls did have a very good leg.  He was third with over 33,000 points.  Things were looking very difficult.  Poor planning had dug the riders of Team Robo a very deep hole.  Shane sat in 7^th, I was 10^th and John Ryan was 13th.  The only thing we could hope for was a slew of larger bonuses on the next leg to try to make up some ground.

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